Debate the merits of the modern art installed along Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie in a live chat with arts writer Doug MacCash at noon on Thursday, April 3. Feel free to start posting questions now. Your comments/questions will start appearing at noon, followed by Doug's responses:

Think of them as three retired boxers who were magically given a chance to hop back in the ring. I'm talking about the trio of severe modernist sculptures -- by Liberman, Gold and Trova -- recently planted on Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

Sure, they're going to take a verbal beating from commuters unaccustomed to abstraction springing up in their peripheral vision. But I'm sure the three old pugs will find it far preferable to rusty retirement in City Park.

You don't like them?

That's fair.

You're not supposed to like them -- not at first anyway. This kind of apex abstraction was made to be a bit off-putting, obscure and aggressive. It's the art equivalent of advanced calculus -- it doesn't care if you don't get it.

Most people feel just like you do about highly distilled modernism -- a little confused, a little irritated. Especially when it is thrust abruptly into their everyday environments -- even if their everyday environment is as visually chaotic and cluttered as Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

DOUG MACCASH / TIMES-PICAYUNECompeting for driver attention ...

Actually, the Liberman, Gold and Trova probably blend into the Metairie thoroughfare better than they ever did in City Park, where big, angular steel stuff stands out like a black eye against all the foliage and gently flowing water of the lagoons. But the thing is, people have come to expect incomprehensible steel stuff in City Park, because that's where the New Orleans Museum of Art is. Truth be told, over the past years, the three old rusty sculptures had become practically invisible in their near-the-museum setting -- just generic modern art robed in complete acceptability.

The three old raging bulls might have been contenders in their time, but by the time they were trucked out to Metairie, all the proud in-your-face inscrutability had washed away with the years -- along with the gull droppings. The three aging sculptures (The Liberman is 41 years old; the Gold is 28 and the Trova is 38) had become so unremarkable, so complacent, that they weren't even invited to join all the other sculptures in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden when it opened in 2003.

Outsider status, oxidation and obscurity was their fate.

Sad.

So when a representative of Jefferson Parish asked the director of the New Orleans Museum of Art if there were any extra sculptures hanging around that could be lent to the parish's $658,232 beautification project, it was a Rocky Balboa moment. Moving out to Metairie was the sculptures' chance to limber up the joints -- so to speak -- and get back in the ring. The Liberman and Trova were given coats of paint for the occasion -- Popsicle orange and blue. Like the Gold, they had been raw metal when displayed in City Park.

Thousands of drivers rolled by the sculptures on Thursday afternoon. Eyes peered from the shadowy interiors of passing cars at the strange sights on the newly manicured neutral ground. It's safe to assume that some drivers probably were disdainful.

A little disdain makes modern art feel right at home.

Bring it.

Disdain is what modern art is all about. You easily can imagine the sculptures dancing in their corners, punching the air, grateful for a new fight and a new audience -- an audience that, given time, they might win over.